Backups & Disaster Recovery Planning

Keep daily backups offsite. These can be in the form of tape, CD-R, DVD-R, removable
hard drives, or even secure file transfers. If data becomes damaged, you would be able to
restore from the last known good backup. The most important step while following a
backup procedure is to verify that the backup was a success. Too many people just
assume that the backup is working only to find out that the drive or media was bad six
months earlier when they were infected by a virus or lost a hard drive. If the data that you
are trying to archive is less then five gig, DVD-R drives are a great solution. Both the
drives and disks have come down in price and are now a viable option. This is also one of
the fastest backup methods to process and verify. For larger backups, tape drives and
removable hard drives are the best option. If you choose this method, you will need to
rotate the backup with five or seven different media (tapes, CD/DVD, removable drives)
to get the most out of the process. It is also suggested to take a “master” backup out of the
rotation on a scheduled basis and archive offsite in a fireproof safe. This protects the data
from fire, flood, and theft.
In the Internet age, understanding that you have to maintain these processes will help you
become successful when preventing damage and minimizes the time, costs, and liabilities
involved during the disaster recovery phase if you are affected.